It’s never too late to do the right thing. Schlam Cru, who delivers a highly skilled workforce of technical specialists in equipment maintenance to top tier mine sites across Australia, recently underwent a significant transformation in their recruitment process.  

Based in Perth with a remote workforce of over 450 team members, Schlam Cru attracts the best talent in the industry, fosters continuous improvement and shares expert knowledge to elevate partners’ capabilities. Over the past three years, Schlam has grown by 44% with a retention rate of 94.6%. 

We sat down with Mat Rigby, General Manager at Schlam Cru, to discuss how their hiring process has transformed with the integration of JobAdder and HR platform HiBob. This integration led to huge improvements in time to fill, team efficiency and candidate to employee experience.

A shift from manual processes

With Schlam Cru’s dedication to enhancing mining equipment productivity by tackling maintenance challenges head-on; their emphasis on attracting and retaining top talent had to be a core focus. 

“We are, by definition, a people business and our success is dependent on growing, nurturing and empowering a highly capable workforce to deliver for our customers. With people at the centre of everything we do, it is imperative that we adopt systems and processes to support our people to achieve this.” Rigby said.

Having integrated JobAdder and HiBob has allowed Schlam Cru to automatically take newly-hired candidates from JobAdder and add them as an employee in Bob. This integration, exclusively supported by HiBob, operates as a one-way API connection from JobAdder to Bob. When candidates are designated as ‘Hired’ in JobAdder, their details are automatically pushed to Bob. Bob’s JobAdder integration also offers data mapping functionality for enhanced customisation.

Prior to this integration, Schlam Cru faced labour-intensive and manual recruitment processes. Rigby said their previous system lacked essential features crucial for their industry. Faced with recurring hiring challenges, they knew then that they’d have to make a change to their processes or they’d be hindering company growth.

“One of the key motivations that prompted us to change applicant tracking systems is that we wanted to create a better experience for our people. JobAdder has made that seamless and possible. That was a game-changer for us,” Rigby said. 

“JobAdder resolved key issues like manual interview scheduling and the absence of talent pooling, vital in our competitive landscape.”

Key features that reshaped recruitment

At its very core, Bob was designed with agility and customisation in mind. Whether it’s expanding to a new location or hiring dozens of new joiners, Bob gave Schlam Cru autonomy, saved admin time, and ensured they remained compliant with Australian employment laws and regulations.

Rigby further noted that it was JobAdder’s features, such as quick candidate submission and streamlined interview scheduling that were pivotal in their decision-making. “Its ability to streamline resume parsing significantly saved us time,” he said. 

“JobAdder has really become a central source of truth as well. We’re now storing all documents in one location whereas before, it was more challenging for recruiters to find what they need,” Rigby continued. 

Following JobAdder’s implementation, Schlam Cru experienced substantial improvements in time to fill roles and team efficiency. “Our time to fill reduced significantly, allowing us to review candidates swiftly and effectively, doubling our capacity,” Rigby added.

Adapting to diverse recruitment needs

In terms of their recruitment needs, Rigby stressed the importance of a system handling diverse requirements. “JobAdder’s capability to manage both volume and proactive recruitment was instrumental. Its streamlined integration capabilities centralised all conversations, enhancing our efficiency in candidate handling,” he said.

JobAdder further facilitated Schlam Cru’s branding rollout and ensured a consistent candidate experience. “Utilising JobAdder’s templates allowed us to communicate our brand consistently, positively impacting candidate understanding and preparation.” said Kylie Muriale, Marketing Manager for Schlam.

Rigby commended JobAdder’s value for money, emphasising its comprehensive feature set and recruiter-friendly design. 

“JobAdder offers superior features across the recruitment process, providing efficient parsing of resumes and a comprehensive talent acquisition module, designed by recruiters, for recruiters.

“For us, one of the main things is the integration with HiBob, and seamlessly taking someone from applying for a job, uploading all their documents, and then onboarding them through to HiBob without having to manually enter a whole heap of data,” Rigby said.

So employee engagement and productivity definitely improved as a result of the integration with JobAdder. 

“Our employees were also able to get time back in their day. They loved how easy it was to get the information they needed on the JobAdder platform,” Rigby said.

“We used to ask candidates to send across their documents by email and then we’d have to go and file that on to Sharepoint. With JobAdder, all we need to do is simply send a link to the candidate we’re bringing onboard, they attach the required documents and this goes into JobAdder. When we onboard that person, all this information flows straight through to the HiBob. This saves us a lot of time. There’s no need to rename files and less room for errors,” he said.